An investigation into the corrected version of Zahed Darwajeki’s Lataif al-Tafsir: Case study of Chapter Saffat

 
Lataif al-Tafsir is one of the most ancient and complete Persian commentaries, published by Mrs. Saeedeh Kamaifard with the help of Miras Maktoub Institute. The commentary is in five volumes and based on two versions. This study tried to examine the corrections of this commentary, focusing on Chapter Saffat of the holy Quran. This chapter was selected as it is among the middle chapters of the Quran, its size is big enough to be explored, it includes various issues, and ignoring the original version in the second half of this chapter. The researchers believe that the commentary has various shortcomings and categorized them into “form” and “content” shortcomings. Many witnesses pertaining to any of the categories were identified in the text. Succinctness and incontrovertible misreadings were focused upon. The succinct paper could not allow reporting in detail the causes of the misreadings, so they were mentioned briefly. The study concluded that the recorrection of Lataif al-Tafsir is totally remarkable as examining the case shows it clearly. Even if one doubts about the generalizing the findings of examining this chapter to all the commentary, some other incontrovertible issues confirm the finding such as putting aside and not using the ancient original version that belongs to Astan Quds Razavi, not having access to the complete eligible version that belongs to Abu Rayhan Biruni Library in Tashkent, not using ancient commentary and etymology books, and repeated misreadings due to ignoring the register and context.
 
Keywords: Lataif al-Tafsir, Saffat Chapter, Text Correction, Misreading, Criticism, Distortion

Introduction

Lataif al-Tafsir is among the most ancient and comprehensive Persian commentaries, published by Mrs. Saeedeh Kamaifard with the help of Miras Maktoub Institute. The commentary has been done based on two versions and published in five volumes. This study tried to examine the corrections of this commentary, focusing on Chapter Saffat of the holy Quran. Among the issues affecting the selection of this chapter are its size, the diversity of its contents, and the losses in the second half of the original version of this chapter. The researchers believe that this corrected commentary includes various shortcomings and mistakes and they categorized them into “form” and “content” issues.

Conclusion

Witnesses of any of the categories were identified in the text and were put into its correct category. Succinctness and incontrovertible misreadings were focused upon. As the paper is supposed to be short, including all causes of the misreadings in details was impossible. A short review of correcting the chapter shows clearly the following issues:

Various publishing and writing mistakes of this correction have greatly damaged the originality and validity of the text. Misreadings of the text have led to changes in the interpreter’s meaning and confusing the audience;
Putting aside other ancient original versions such as the ones to Astan Quds Razavi and the manuscript belong to Abu Rayhan Biruni Library in Tashkent was not a right act. We guess that the reasons can be taking easy the issue, not pondering enough upon selecting the right versions, and probably lack of access to some versions;
On the one hand, such issues like inaccuracy, lack of perseverance, and maybe haste in reading the original version, and on the one hand, the omissions and incorrect recordings of this version have led to many misreadings;
Not checking ancient interpretive, narrative, historical, and lexical sources have resulted in meaningless parts of the text. Probably, the corrector did not feel necessary to use these sources, or found checking them difficult and time-consuming, or was content with recording the available versions and presenting an authentic commentary;
Decreasing and increasing changes, deliberate in most cases and without any apparent reason, imposes the doubt the trustworthiness of the corrector in accurately recording the phrases;
The corrector is supposed to endeavor at first to make correct decision regarding the illegibility or omissions and give a correct reading, using other versions and evidence. He should speculate in some occacions. Unfortunately, some of these speculations have been resulted in wrong conclusions because of putting aside the authentic version belong to Astan Quds Razavi library and neglecting the context;
Two versions have been used for correcting this surah and most of other surahs. However, the second half of this surah has been corrected using only one version (Ganj version). The wrong issues of this part were so many so that the text is unusable, and we decided to categorize a few kind of these mistake examples into “miscellaneous misreadings”.
In addition to the above-mentioned issues, the huge volume of this commentary, the corrector’s haste, the great diversity of this work in terms of content and meaning, the archaic fashion of expressing of the content, and different survived versions of this commentary with different handwritings have make correcting this work too difficult to be done by a corrector in a limited time and remain no choice except for correcting the commentary.